The catalysts of social media

Posted on April 23, 2010 by marc meyer

Earlier today I mentioned that I would love to use the words granular and linear when I talk to people about social media and marketing, but my mind doesn’t work in a linear or granular fashion. I’m more of a black and white type. I like to distill things down.

As I was walking my black and white dog this morning I was struck by a notion that really, what might be driving widespread social media adoption are 2 simple things. Word of Mouth and Search.

A social network happens because of what? Because someone told us about it or we did a search. Pretty much, right? Yes there may have been an accelerant( see traditional marketing) that drove us to the social network, but for the most part how we get there is pretty simple.

Viral Video #234

Posted on June 27, 2008 by marc meyer

This video was sent to me via email and naturally I sent it on, because that’s what we do. But computer graphics notwithstanding, this is still a pretty cool, “wow” type of video.

Viral Message. When marketers hope we get it. Did you?

Posted on June 7, 2008 by marc meyer

Here is a) a great message b) a video that has the potential to be viral and c) Is well done. .When you get to the end of the video, is it what you thought the message would be?

Word of Mouth Marketing-U

Posted on May 6, 2008 by marc meyer

I know it’s a little late to be telling everyone, but if my schedule wasn’t so tight, I would be going to this:

WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Marketing University

Something completely new from WOMMA.

WOMM-U is a 2-day comprehensive and interactive educational experience built around giving you the real-world knowledge you need to execute exceptional word of mouth marketing programs.

WOMM-U is different from any other conference you have ever attended (including previous WOMMA conferences) because of the powerful mix of the theoretical, practical, and hands-on opportunities that will allow you to return to your office prepared to strengthen your existing WOMM programs or begin new ones. The curriculum includes:

Keynote presentations and real-life WOMM success stores from major brands highlighting their WOMM success stories
Unique, workshop-style breakouts that give attendees an opportunity to begin applying the lessons they’ve learned
WOMM in Action: Team study sessions that will give all WOMM-U attendees a chance to share their best word of mouth strategies with highly respected charities and public interest advocacy groups, offering up fresh WOMM tactics that will further their charitable efforts and advance their success.

Who Should Attend WOMM-U

Brand marketers, BtoB and BtoC marketers, Corporate communicators, Nonprofit marketers, Advocacy experts, CRM specialists, Social media practitioners, and Agency marketers
Marketers new to the WOMM practice
WOMM experts
Marketers trying to jumpstart WOMM in their organization
Marketers trying to fine-tune active WOMM programs
Anyone else with a stake in WOMM!

17 Social Networking Shopping Sites for 2008

Posted on March 19, 2008 by marc meyer

For those of you out there that just love to shop, either online or off, here is a list of social networking sites geared especially for you. For those times when you are flush with cash or have nothing better to do with the credit card limit burning a hole in your wallet, why not put it to good use here and buy stuff? Lets get a quick look at the top 22. In no particular order, though we have added an asterisk to certain sites that have caught our eye!

Wize Thousands of new products are released every year. Millions of dollars are spent advertising products to consumers like you. With all the choices and information available, it is challenging to know which products are best for you and your family. Wize makes finding the right product easier and faster by gathering all the information and opinions on the Web and making sense of it for you.
Stylehive Stylehive.com is an online style club for people who live for fashion, design and shopping. It’s where you meet your style muses and follow them as they discover and share their latest finds.Part social-networking club, part pop-culture lab , Stylehive.com is one big ensemble cast of trendsetters creating, discovering and buying the next big thing!
Kaboodle Kaboodle is a social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle’s powerful shopping tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find best prices.
Thisnext ThisNext is an online media and social-shopping company where people recommend their favorite products for others to discover and purchase online. Bridging the continents of offline media, brand advertising and e-commerce by building a media platform that supports the marketing lifecycle – awareness, consideration, trial and consumption
*Stylefeeder StyleFeeder is a personal shopping engine that makes personal recommendations, just for you. It’s a great way to discover new products and keep track of what you’re shopping for online, using visual bookmarks.
Epinions Epinions helps people make informed buying decisions. It is a premier consumer reviews platform on the Web and a reliable source for valuable consumer insight, unbiased advice, in-depth product evaluations and personalized recommendations.
Crowdstorm Crowdstorm attempts to address market fragmentation by aggregating content from experts across the web (buyers guides, reviews, blog posts) and blend it with content and question / answer style advice from people you trust (friends, family, colleagues, peers…). The vision is to provide a single point of contact in helping users research products and find the right one for them before sending them off to the best place to buy it and at the right price
Buzzillions Based on real buyer feedback, They help you find, compare, and decide on the right product for you! They collect thousands of reviews from actual buyers, verified by the retailer that sold it to them. Every product on this site has customer reviews.
Shopstyle ShopStyle combines fashion, social networking and shopping, providing the tools to interpret style trends so people can create, share and shop personalized looks.
OSOYOU OSOYOU.com is a shopping and socialising website for women with a passion for fashion and beauty.
Theglimpse/Thefind TheFind.com is the leading shopping search engine that finds more stores, brands and products than anyone else online. TheFind.com and Glimpse.com will now enable savvy shoppers to quickly discover even more unique, fashionable items than ever before. Thefind is a shopping search engine that delivers comprehensive lists of products and their corresponding images, ranked by the leading products, brands, stores and styles on the very first page of results.
Wishpot Wishpot is a free social shopping service that makes it easy to save and share interesting things you find in stores and online. Items are easily collected online or from stores and organized using simple online lists. Lists and items can be kept private or shared with others. You can collect and discover products you like, recommend your favorite stuff, share and explore gift suggestions or ask for opinions and advice.
*Bzzagent/Frogpond- The Frogpond uses consumer opinions to help you cut through the online clutter and get to the good stuff. Found a Frog you love? It’s time to Ribbit and share your opinion of it to spread the word. How far can you make your Frog hop?
Shopwiki ShopWiki is a shopping search engine designed to help consumers find specific products on the Internet with ease. It is the only shopping search engine that combines advanced Web-crawling technology with consumer-written wiki
Etsy Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade.
*Woot Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it’s taken on a life of its own.
*Wists Wists was created for 2 simple purposes: 1. To make finding well designed, interesting or unusual products and collectibles both simple and fun. 2. To make publishing or sharing lists of recommendations and wishlists easier and more appealing than maintaining a weblog and not tied to one particular store. Using Wists is not like going to Walmart or searching a price comparison shopping site – we try to encourage the discovery and promotion of products from small retailers and manufacturers and young designers.

And here are 8 honorable mentions:

We hope you can appreciate the sites mentioned. If you have any feedback or a new site to tell us about, don’t hesitate to let us know. Some come and some go, so really the test will be in one year. How many of these will be around next year?